Four years in Frederick.

So, some backstory.

After the whole show down, knock out, (metaphoric) slugfest between Dad and I over the calf conditions was finally settled, I started making plans to set up better heifer pastures and to get the crop rotations really up to gear.

I started getting the same kind of push back, and it just didn't seem worth another years long fight to change things.  In the time since, it has come to my attention that my father has probably got some acute hoarder tendencies and some undiagnosed anxieties.  It would explain a lot about the things that upset him so.

All that aside, I was offered a pretty good deal on rent down Frederick way, so  I packed up my bags somewhere around about the fall of 2015 and I left. 

Side note: Dad has just retired this past year (Fall of 2018) and I am happy to say that things with the animals never did get so egregious again.  He was also able to clear his debts while only selling what I estimate was about half his assets.  A Farmer of any kind with no debt is something of a rarity these days, do he's doing alright. Says he's probably just going to semi-retire, do some crop farming, and raise some beefers.

Mom kept at her schooling, has got her doctorate now, and has some professorial jobs lined up, so she's doing alright, too.  :-)

As for me, I spent a few years down in Frederick, did some tutoring, worked some odd jobs, and eventually settled in for a little over two years as a Brewer at Flying Dog.

All-in-all, none of the work was bad, but tutoring was often sporadic, and the brewery was pretty up front about there not really being too much room for promotion or advancement.

I was still pretty glad to have the work.  I was able to save up enough to get the cavities in my teeth fixed, and I was able to save up enough to buy a not-so-old vehicle when my old Honda threw itself apart.  Mostly, though, I felt stagnant and frustrated.

Eventually, I managed to luck into some pretty regular tutoring clients, and I had a particularly good break when one of the local community colleges liked my resume enough to offer me a job at a really excellent rate.

So I left the Brewery, got all my paperwork set up to be a professor, committed a little bit more to some of the odd jobs I had going, and took on a few more tutoring clients by word of mouth. 

I started to breathe a little easier.  Money was looking a lot less tight and all my various jobs together were things I really enjoyed.

My lease was up, though, and the people whose upstairs I was renting decided they were getting out of the rental business.  They were more than fair about it, though, and said that they could even give me a good six months, if I needed it, to find a new place.

The very next day, the community college called me and said that they had over-hired and wouldn't need me after all.  Maybe next year, they said.  An hour or two later, I found out that my most reliable and lucrative odd jobs were also unexpectedly going to be drying out in a matter of weeks.

Now none of this was all that great a tragedy.  They probably would have taken me back at the brewery.  I left on good terms.  If I was willing to brave the hell commute down 270 each morning, I probably could have even found some good work down in Silver Springs or DC.  I had time to find a new place to live, too, though I had such a good deal on the rent that I probably wouldn't have found a place that wasn't at least a touch more expensive.

Point is, that what really got to me was the feeling that here I was, four years later, and other than my teeth and my car, I didn't have a lot to show for it.  I was more or less back to square one.  Mind you, I know that's not true.  I also had all the people I had helped, clients or otherwise, but that's not how a mind works.  Not my mind, anyway.

There's almost certainly a depression that runs through the family, though none of us was ever diagnosed.  I've seen how deadly it is when it catches up to a body, and I know what it feels like when it's coming on.

So I opted for a change of scenery.  It keeps away that stagnant feeling, and I had heard that the work was easier to find out on the west coast.

Looks like I might have heard right.  Stay tuned for more later.